Martyn White | Thursday, 24 February 2022
Last week in an online tying class I was going over some really simple scruffy dry fly and emerger patterns. While I was on the first pattern, Bob Wyatt's DHE, something interesting came up, in that despite being a fantastic pattern it's probably not a very saleable fly. Certainly some people buy them, but the pattern has nothing about it to catch anglers, which is usually a good thing in a fishing fly.
I should say that I love the DHE (and the snowshoe version) to my mind it's a perfect emerger pattern. It's anything but nothing in particular, a quick and easy tie, scruffy and alive looking, when tied with the long thorax like Bob does it helps the tippet break through the surface film, it is a fantastic fooler of fish on both stillwater and river. I love all rough little flies like that actually.
After the class I had a look online and found that there a lot of people tying DHEs, a lot of them have various additions, like flash dubbings, pearly ribs, shucks etc. this is fine, and they'll definitely catch fish. It does seem to back up the discussion we had on zoom, about bin appeal and expectations of getting something for your money. I've a fair bit of experience of this kind of thing from when I was seriously selling flies; £1.50 for a wee scruffy mess of deer hair and hare's ear might cause some to baulk, but stick a pearl rib on the abdomen and suddenly it's a fair price. Similarly I would sometimes meet customers on the river or loch and when talking about flies, or if the fly box came out I'd be asked why the flies in my box weren't what I'd put in their order for the same river.. often the same guys who would complain if I did!
I suppose a large part of the angler appeal thing comes down to confidence, a lot of people like flies with triggers or supposed imitations of certain features of the natural. Perhaps the casual tyer who also buys would prefer to tie these simple patterns on their own. But there is good reason to have these little, deliberately scruffy patterns in the box and on the end of the leader.